Taiwanese Train Snacks: Tea Eggs

Passport & Plate - Taiwanese Tea Eggs

Taiwan | Friday, February 27, 2015 | 5 photos

Ingredients
6 eggs and enough water to hard boil
1/2 cup dark soy sauce (if unavailable, you can substitute regular soy sauce , but it will not be as intense)
3 cups water
2 Tbsp sugar
3 pieces star anise
1 cinnamon stick
2 tsp jasmine tea leaves (traditionally, black tea leaves are used, but I prefer the fragrance of jasmine scented green tea)

 

How to prepare this recipe
1. Hard boil eggs in water. Allow to cool.
2. Prepare braise by combining other ingredients and bringing to a boil.
3. Once eggs are cool enough to handle, gently but firmly crack the shells until you have many little cracks all over the shell. Do not remove shell.
4. Place cracked, hardboiled eggs into the braise and simmer at low heat for half an hour.
5. Turn off heat and allow eggs to steep in the braise for at least two hours, or overnight in the refrigerator. The longer they steep the darker the color and the stronger the flavor.
6. When ready to eat, remove eggs from the braising liquid and carefully remove eggshells.

 

The story behind this recipe
This recipe is inspired by train trips in Taiwan. These trains traverse the island from bustling Taipei in the North, to the less dense, more tropical, and less hurried Southern cities of Kaoshiung and Tainan. The tracks cross land dotted with Buddhist temples and plantations growing pineapple and bananas.

Inside, you can pass the time eating. Within minutes of departure, an attendant enters to roll her metal cart down the aisle. In my childhood, the attendant had hot flasks of Taiwan’s excellent tea, which she poured into tall, clear glasses that fit into metal cup holders. There were snacks galore– peanuts, crackers, cookies, and also more exotic offerings of orange-scented beef jerky and dried, shredded squid. My favorite was the ben-dong. These box lunches, named after Japanese bentos, contained the simplest homestyle tastes of Taiwanese cooking. A common combination might be soy sauce braised pork, Chinese greens, and a “tea egg,” a hard-boiled egg cooked in a broth of soy sauce, aromatics and tea, neatly packaged with fluffy, sticky white steamed rice.

A few years ago, Taiwan introduced a high-speed rail combining the technology and design of Japan’s fabled Bullet Train and France’s TGV. The train stations are spotless, modern and comfortable. Seeing the multiple Starbucks in Taipei’s train station made me fear that I wouldn’t find any Taiwanese food on board. So I popped into the nearest 7-Eleven to load up on train snacks (in Asia, 7-Eleven is a viable eating option.) Instead of hot dogs and Big Gulps, you can get steamed pork buns, dim sum, and tea eggs.

I settled into my seat, marveling again at how chic and sophisticated everything looked. Within five minutes, the attendant entered with her food trolley. The food packaging looked more modern, but the food was identical to what I remembered from long ago. I bought a ben-dong, tea egg included. This recipe brings back the memories of those wonderful journeys.